My self-imposed project of doing something new every week doesn’t necessarily mean that each week will bring a big exciting adventure.

Such was the case this week, when my friend Susan and I subjected ourselves to our first timeshare presentation.

We had just rounded the final corner of an organized 5K walk when we spotted the freebie tents at the finish line. We were helping ourselves to the usual bottled water, banana halves and protein bars, when we were snagged into a booth promising cheap vacation travel. We were offered an amazing deal: For a few dollars, we could spend two nights at a cushy resort hotel. It sounded pretty darn good, but after we handed over our credit cards, I had a sudden epiphany.

“Wait,” I said, “Is this a timeshare deal?”

I’d heard horror stories from friends who had attended timeshare presentations. They’d practically been held captive while a salesman pressured them to buy.

The nicely dressed young man hesitated. “Well, we’d ask you come to a two hour presentation about our program.”

We were both ready to snatch back our credit cards. “Should we do it?” I asked Susan. “It’s only two hours. And they can’t make us buy anything we don’t want to buy, right?”

We stood in the booth staring at each other. “Well,” Susan said, “you haven’t attended a timeshare presentation before, so this could be your new thing for this week.”

That clinched it. We signed up and got our information packets telling us where to go and when to show up, later in the week.

When we arrived, it was very clear that this event was going to be meticulously orchestrated. No, we were told, we couldn’t stay together. Each of us would meet individually with our assigned representative.

Our representatives led us to small round tables in a large meeting room, each table with two or three chairs. In addition to Susan and me, there was a young couple with a small baby and a smattering of others. I tried to take a seat facing the center of the room, but was firmly directed instead to take a chair with my back to the room, facing my representative.

Steve wore a pink polo shirt that contrasted awkwardly with his very red face. He immediately peppered me with questions about myself, in staccato fashion, without seeming to listen to the answers. What was I going to do this afternoon, what kind of dog did I have, how old was the dog, what breed is the dog, what are the traits of that breed of dog? This, I assumed, was somehow designed to make us bond, but it was just weird and bewildering. His questions turned to how and when I vacation. As he made notes about my answers, he tried to fashion his pitch to fit my vacation habits, which was a near impossible task, since I favor group adventure-based trips. When I told him I wasn’t interested in a timeshare, he repeatedly insisted that this deal really wasn’t a timeshare (even though the printed material I’d received stated in bold print that this was a solicitation of timeshare interests).

We all faced the front of the room for a group slide presentation, focused on why this program was such a good deal, and the vast sums of money we would all save over the years by using this program for our vacations. It was an artful approach. If you accepted all the assumptions that supported their conclusion, you could conclude that yes, this was a great deal. But if you stepped back and thought about the unpredictability of where you would be and what you might want to be doing in the future, it really didn’t add up.

Then we went back into conversations with our individual representatives. Steve seemed quite perplexed at my lack of interest. Abruptly he stood up and turned me over to an older man with rumpled hair, who toted a fat well-worn notebook binder. I noticed that this was happening throughout the room: Team 2 was arriving on the scene.

At this point Susan caught my eye and sent me the look. You know the look. She widened her eyes just a little, one corner of her mouth lifted just a tad, and she stared into my eyes for a beat or two. What the f—, the look says.

I asked K why he was replacing Steve at my table. He told me that Steve was new, and that he would be better at answering my questions. I told him I didn’t have any questions. He shrugged, and opened his binder. It contained all the same information we had been given during the slide presentation, and I told him I’d already seen it. K was much more aggressive and challenging. Why would you not want to do this? What can you find negative about this? Why did you come here today? He leaned across the table, essentially growling at me, and I wondered how this approach was going to succeed. Was I supposed to be intimidated into signing up? I looked at my watch: We were closely approaching the two hour mark.

Finally, K slammed his binder closed and snarled, “Thank you for your time,” before leaving the table without a backward glance. I was hurried through a station in another room where a financial counselor was ready to offer me payment information (“no thanks”) and then I was ushered back down to the reception area by Steve, who asked me to please rate him excellent on all categories of the exit survey. If I didn’t, he told me, he wouldn’t get some accrued points that he really needed.

Susan and I chatted for a few minutes out on the street before going our separate ways. We’d both found the experience unpleasant, and neither of us had been tempted to sign up.

I keep thinking about that young couple with the baby. They seemed to be in deep conversation with their salesperson, so maybe they were considering buying. I so hope they don’t do it. The underlying assumption that life is predictable bothers me. It’s not that we shouldn’t plan for the future, but I know all too well that the future is a fragile and amorphous thing, and it’s not going turn out just as you envisioned it when you’re in your twenties, part of a bright new family with a darling little baby, imagining about how you’re going to vacation for the rest of your life. The future will include some curve balls that you’ll never see coming. ​

And those two days at the resort hotel for such an amazing price, our prize for sacrificing two hours? Well, it turns out that there are some restrictions that we didn’t hear about when we signed up. Time will tell if we can even book our resort stays. It’s a good reminder: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

(Moving forward into my second year of widowhood, I’ve committed to do one new thing—new to me—each week for a year. It can be big or small, important or silly—but it has to be new. It’s a way of reminding myself to focus forward, into my future life..)​ Sensory deprivation tanks, also called isolation tanks, have been around since the 1950’s, but now they’re called float tanks. Floating in the tanks can supposedly reduce stress and chronic pain, by promoting deep relaxation. Their inventor, neuropsychiatrist Dr. John C. Lilly, must have been quite the character. He floated in the tanks after taking LSD, and by some accounts, discovered new dimensions and had encounters with aliens while floating.

I wasn’t seeking encounters with aliens, but floating sounded like an interesting new experience. (And, there was a Groupon deal, so it was pretty cheap.) The company advertised “Athletes, Meditators, and Creatives have been floating widely since the 1960’s.”

Back in the early days, though, the floater was fully immersed in a tank with a bizarre-looking mask that blocked out all sensory input. This company’s pictures showed tanks that looked more like plastic clamshells—not exactly appealing to me, but not terrifying. The tank water is saturated with epsom salt, and that provides buoyancy to keep a body afloat, even though the water is only about eighteen inches deep in the tank.

The float company’s lounge area was clean, well-lit and smelled vaguely of the ocean. While I waited, I was serenaded with the sounds of water burbles and faint strains of new age music. On top of a large coffee table lay a book in which clients have written about their float experiences. I leafed through the pages. There were some sketches, some general accolades (“it was relaxing”) and a very sad, long entry by someone who was hoping “to turn his fake smiles into real smiles.” I suspected he might need more than a float.

My favorite entry: “This is definitely the most L.A. thing I have ever done.”

My attendant—enthusiastic and clean-cut, with a lean long-distance runner’s body—escorted me back to my float room: a small, vaguely industrial space with an open shower, a place to hang and stack my belongings, and of course, my pod, which was emoting eerie green light and bubbling. I was given my instructions: Take off all my clothes (you do this buck naked), put in earplugs, shower and shampoo hair, turn off the room light and get in. After I was settled in, I was told, I should hit a button on the tank wall that would turn off the tank light. At that point, I would be in complete darkness and silence, floating in body temperature water. I was to “just relax,” and when my hour was up, the light would go back on.

I confessed that I was very nervous because I tend to be claustrophobic. Not a problem, he said, once you turn the light off you won’t be conscious of being in a small space. Well, okay. I showered, stepped into the tank and closed the lid. So far, so good. I slipped into the water, or perhaps onto the water, moving my arms into a goalpost position as I had been instructed. Then, I hit the button and turned out the light.

It was utterly dark and immediately disorienting. I floated, listening to myself breathe, for maybe five minutes. Then, I decided I wanted to turn the light on briefly, just for reassurance.

I couldn’t find the light switch.

The float tank isn’t that big, but in any total darkness, disorientation is common. I flapped and splashed around like a hooked salmon, slapping the tank walls, not panicked exactly, but close. Finally I shoved open the tank lid. With the help of just a shred of light from the room, I found the light switch.

Whew! Well, by my estimation, only about ten minutes were up, so I needed to try again. Lie back, turn off the light…but this time I did take note that the light switch was very near the lever bar for the tank top, just in case.

I floated and tried to relax, but I found it progressively harder and harder to breath. The humidity was intense and I couldn’t shake the impression that I was suffocating. My brain went into overdrive: “I’m suffocating, I’m running out of air, I’ll pass out and no one will know until the hour is up, and I could just die here…” Definitely not the stuff of deep relaxation. Nudging the tank lid open just a sliver with my foot, I let in a trickle of cooler air. That, of course, lowered the air temperature in the pod ever so slightly, so that the air and water temperatures weren’t exactly the same, which is how it’s supposed to be, but I don’t think I would have stayed in the tank otherwise.

I tried to enjoy the experience, and maybe I got close, for a time. I didn’t feel weightless, but more like my body was supported on a hard rubber-like surface that was perfectly fitted to my body. I never attained a sense of timeless relaxation. If fact, when the light went on to let me know that my hour was over, I was relieved. ​

After I’d showered off all the salt and dressed, I talked to the attendant. He was clearly disappointed that I hadn’t been delighted with my experience. When I told him about my breathing issues, he said there were runners’ breathing techniques that would help. He asked me if I’d be back, and I told him that I’d have to reflect about that. But really I don’t. I’ll just chalk this up to a new experience, but not one I think I have to repeat. If I decide to search for Dr. Lilly’s aliens and other dimensions, I’ll have to try another route.

(Moving forward into my second year of widowhood, I’ve committed to do one new thing—new to me—each week for a year. It can be big or small, important or silly—but it has to be new. It’s a way of reminding myself to focus forward, into my future life..)

I’ll start with a small confession: Once years ago, during a boozy happy hour with co-workers in a hotel lobby, we all briefly opened our palms to a fortune teller who was part of the hotel’s entertainment experience. I don’t remember much about what she said to me—wine was involved—though I do recall that some of what she said seemed creepily accurate.

But I have never before sought out a psychic. On the bus route between my house and downtown Seattle, a sign on a tiny pie-shaped building caught my eye:

Flapping over the permanent sign, a flag announced: “Palm Reading Special $15”

Well, who can resist a sale?

When I decided that this would be my first “new thing,” I discovered that I was nervous, maybe even a trifle fearful. New situations are uncomfortable. I also had to examine my motivation. I don’t believe in psychics and palm reading, but I wanted to know what it was like to have this experience. So, I cast myself in the role of respectful observer.

I walked through the open door into the tiny teal-colored entry room and pressed a button marked “Deliveries.” After about a minute, a young woman popped her head through the top half of a Dutch door and asked me to wait. I sat in a white upholstered bucket chair surrounded by crystal sticks, Buddha heads, clusters of white candles and, oddly enough, a sculpture of a reclining gnome reading a book while cuddling with a bunny.

I half expected my psychic to look like Oda Mae Brown, the fortune teller Whoopi Goldberg portrayed in the movie Ghost. Flowing robes, head scarf, staring into space while reciting messages from the dead. But the young woman who appeared to read my palm was remarkably ordinary in appearance, a 30-something with Mediterranean coloring and deep brown eyes, hair pulled away from her face. Instead of flowing robes she wore a multi-colored tank top.

We settled in a small cluttered room with a small table between us, only missing a crystal ball to completely set the stage. She looked me straight in the eye. “What brings you here today?”

I answered honestly. “Curiosity.”

First we talked charges. I would have liked a Tarot card reading, but that was $45. I settled for the sale offering, the reading of my right palm for $15, though I could have had both palms read for $25. (Do they tell different stories, I wonder?)

I placed my right palm upright on the table between us and she began. She stared at it briefly and told me that I would have a long life, into my late 80s or 90s or perhaps beyond, and my health signs were good. My energy was very positive, though the chakras showed signs of stress. I might want to meditate on my chakras.

“Are you under some stress?” she asked me.

Although this seemed like she was cheating, I answered. “My husband died recently.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That can cause some stress.”

Duh.

She told me that I was a kind person with an open heart, but that I needed to take care that others didn’t take advantage of me. My finances were fine, and I’d probably get a monetary boost next year, probably in March. I would travel in July, maybe into August.

“Do you have any questions?” she asked me.

I couldn’t resist. “Will I ever have another relationship?”

“You will be surrounded by love and supported by committed relationships. That’s all I can see at this time.”

Hmmm. Well, that would be pretty good. It was all very bland stuff. I was disappointed. In spite of my great skepticism, I realized I wanted her to gasp over my palm, to be amazed at the wonderfulness of my life to come. Think of how you feel when you crack open a fortune cookie: You don’t believe the message on the slip of paper inside means anything, but nonetheless you’re a little bit pleased when you get a good one.

My reading was over, but my curiosity wasn’t satisfied. “Tell me, how did you get into this line of work?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’ve been doing this all my life. My whole family does this. I’ve been reading Tarot cards since I was five, before I could read.”

Nowthat was interesting. I would love to sit with her over a cup of coffee to hear her story. I’m half tempted to do that—to go back and plunk down another $15, but this time we’ll talk about her history, not mine. That would be much more fascinating than anything she gleaned from my open palm.